Obama Calls It "Looking Out for One Another." Fox Nation Calls it "Collectivist Rant"

Today President Obama was in Fort Stewart, Georgia, speaking to a crowd of soldiers. He was announcing an executive order he'd just signed, to crack down on fraudulent "diploma mills" that market to veterans. Fox Nation barely mentioned that fact; instead it zeroed in on some remarks the President made at the end of his speech about the importance of public investment in universities and research, and made these the subject of a post titled "Obama Goes on Collectivist Rant In Front of Troops." (In front of the troops? Horrors!)

The order, according to a news report from AP was aimed at postsecondary schools that market heavily to soldiers or vets so they can rake in their federal education money. According to administration officials, some of these colleges use misleading military-themed websites that make it look like they're be government-run when in fact, most of them are private and for profit.

Foxnews.com posted the AP story, but Fox Nation took a different tack. It focussed on remarks the President made toward the end of his speech.

"...Each of us is only here because somebody looked out for us. Not just our parents, but our neighbors and our communities and our houses of worship and our VFW halls. Because we had a country that was willing to invest in things like community colleges and universities and scientific research and medicine and caring for our veterans. Each of us is only here because somebody somewhere had our backs. Because generations of Americans worked together. “Out of many we are one.” Those are values we gotta return to...”

The Nation heaped its usual opprobrium on these remarks, calling them a "collectivist rant" and a "hyper partisan tirade hailing big government spending," and accusing him of making a stump speech. (Really? You'd prefer a world where no one looks out for one another? You'd prefer to see America's finest taken advantage of rather than impose the kind of oversight that will keep free markets from running amok?)

Once the speech had ended, said the post, the crowd of Marines "cautiously clapped" to what they had heard. I have to take that on faith, gentle reader, because the video doesn''t show what happened at the end of the speech. Needless to say, Fox Nation readers weren't clapping at all. At this writing the discussion board is a hodgepodge of nastinesses directed at Obama, at the First Lady, and at other posters. I'm still working out how to cut and paste directly from another Web site, but trust me - you aren't missing a thing!